Mortis Operandi is the latest anthology by The Harrow Press, featuring 16 amazing stories of supernatural crime. The anthology was edited by Dru Pagliassotti and the undersigned. The superb cover art is by Leah Jay. Here's what you'll find inside it:

Although not every criminal is a monster, nor every monster a criminal, you might be forgiven for mistaking the two as you investigate the gritty underworld of supernatural crime. Join officers of the law, private eyes, firefighters, bodyguards, crime-scene cleaners, security specialists, and other not-so-everyday citizens as they struggle against the macabre machinations of MORTIS OPERANDI.

MORTIS OPERANDI features stories that revolve around the investigation of a crime and in which the supernatural plays a central role.

TOC:

Some Favor Fire - Lane Robins

I often listen to the YouTube version of “Jane Jane”, which is one of my favorite Peter, Paul and Mary songs, and every time I watch that beautiful video my brain and my senses split: my brain knows, from dry, factual information stored somewhere in its data base, that Mary Travers is dead, but my senses reject the notion. After all, she is so alive and communicative in that video that you simply can't associate her in any way with Death.

Ancient civilizations appreciated the value of keeping the image of the deceased alive, but lacked the technology. From China through Central and South America and all the way to Egypt, they embalmed the body of the deceased; they made masks resembling their features, they wrapped them up in gauze layers, dried them up and generally did everything in their power to preserve them as much as possible, to perpetuate the existence of the person who, prior to his or her death, inhabited that body.

With the advent of photography, Europeans, who are always lazier and more fastidious than other cultures, developed the macabre practice of photographing the dead. That was an easier way to stay in touch with the departed ones, although not one quite as tangible as actually keeping granddady handy in the cellar. As a result, I have a family album full of photographs that you don’t want to see before bedtime.

The short of it is that I owe my life to The United States of America. Understanding how that is so requires reading a longish explanation but there is a lesson to be learned from it, which is why this post is worth reading.

I was about 9 years old when my father one day said to me, “Americans are decent people. You should remember that.” He had a way of saying things; no matter that I had no clue what he was talking about and why. He simply would come up with a statement and make sure that I memorized it for the future. It wasn’t until years later that I got the whole story, which I had only heard in bits and pieces before.

My father, Edgar (aka Ettore) Luzzatto, grew up in Milan, Italy, in the Fascist era. With the publication of Mussolini's racial laws he decided that he wouldn't put up with the discrimination against the Jews. He applied for an immigrant visa to the U.S. but didn't know that in late 1938 the State Department was restricting the issuance of visas to Italian Jews. His application was denied but he was summoned to the U.S. embassy for an interview with a vice consul, who offered him a visitor visa instead. My father, who was young and headstrong, disdainfully refused and got up to leave but the vice consul, who obviously knew more than he was allowed to say, stopped him. “Take the visa I’m offering you, and use it immediately!” he said. My father was so impressed by the tone of his voice that he took it and left Italy after a few days.

Edgar Luzzatto's 1938 Visitor Visa